Human Decay

In “Life after Death,” Mary Roach describes her trip to the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research facility. The facility studies how human bodies decay after death. The studies are used for forensic purposes. If scientists know how a human body decays, they can more accurately determine the time of death. Roach is deliberately descriptive about the sights and smells she encounters. The smell is sweet like rotting fruit, but putrid like rotting meat, she says. Roach has some humors quips during her tour of the Anthropological Research Facility and a morticians’ school. The doctor at Tennessee says the skin with maggots growing underneath look like “expensive Japanese rice paper. You tell yourself these things.” Morticians use the term decedent instead of corpse, stiff, cadaver. Roach says, “It’s as though the man weren’t dead, but merely involved in some protracted legal dispute.”

Why is this article significant to zombies in literature and film? The figure of the zombie is very different to different authors and directors. In “Night of the Living Dead,” Romero uses very little make up and shows no decomposition. Matheson uses an opposite approach in “I am Legend.” He describes in detail the decomposition of the zombies. They are significantly more decomposed and there is more description of how the zombie dies. Roach describes the process of a decomposing body in great detail, like an author’s guide to decomposition. The decomposing flesh of a zombie is part of what makes the zombie frightening. How the author describes the zombie determines how the characters react to the zombies, how they fight the zombies, and how they try to escape the zombies.

Mary Roach also says a lot about how people react to death, without confronting the subject head-on. The scientist at Tennessee sees dead bodies every day, and has a dry sense of humor about the sights and smells. Visiting the mortician, Roach describes the different euphemisms used in mortician’s school. Humans’ facing their own death is part of the human condition, but no one faces it more than morticians and the scientists at Tennessee. The humor and euphemisms are part of their coping mechanism. Humans facing zombies in literature and film also must face their own mortality. They may also face killing their loved ones, friends, and neighbors in order to survive. Matheson uses the psychology of the human condition to its fullest to develop Robert Neville’s character.

Roach uses her experience in Tennessee and morticians’ school to describe the details of decomposition. She also mentions some of the people working around dead bodies, and how they live with death and decay every day. An author could learn more about decay from this article, but also a little about how people cope with death when faced with it daily.